Laser Cutting

Before the advent of CNC laser cutting technology, flat parts were stamped using hard tooling. This meant startup costs would be incurred for a new project and would take an additional 2-4 weeks to complete. Granted there are still some advantages to hard tooling for flat parts (like speed for massive quantities), but laser cutting presents its own set of advantages:

• Easily adjustable
  • Perhaps the biggest advantage of laser cutting versus stamping is the fact that the CNC laser is easily programmable and various changes can be made to a flat part on the fly. This is perfect for prototyping when dimensions and tolerances are fluid and things need to be changed in a hurry to meet customers’ needs.
• Shorter lead times
  • Laser cutting eliminates the need to custom-design or modify specialized tooling for every project. Simply draw the customer’s part and import it into the CAD/CAM program and watch the sparks fly. This results in shorter lead times and cuts startup tooling costs. We usually recommend this for smaller runs of 1,500 parts or less. When a project requires more parts than that, stamping tools begin to perform better than laser cutting. Ultimately though, it comes down to customer budgeting and time constraints.
• Precision
  • Laser cutting is a highly efficient, incredibly precise cutting method. The beam can be focused and adjusted to allow us to hold tolerances of +/- .001 in thinner materials (about .030 thick or less). This means that many of our laser cut parts can be used in extremely demanding industries like aerospace, defense, and electronics.
• Less scrap
  • Using laser CAM software allows us to maximize material usage and eliminate material scrap. By producing highly efficient nests with an infinite number of part orientations we are able to maximize the number of parts produced per sheet. This efficiency allows us to get the most bang for your buck by making sure we squeeze every last part we can out of your sheet of material.

With over 50 years of sheet metal stamping experience we are your one-stop shop for all of your manufacturing needs. Give us a call or request a quote today to get started.

At Verdugo Tool & Engineering, we pride ourselves on providing you with the best product possible. In order to fulfill our commitment to our customers, it is important to know what our machines are capable of from the start. Our Mazak CO2 laser is capable of cutting a number of different materials and thicknesses with extreme precision. Here is an example of the types of materials we can process: